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A simple explanation of the benefits (and risks) of using CFL lightbulbs. This video comes in an unbranded “presentation quality” version that can be licensed for use in the workplace.

FPL downplays the impact of lighting on electric bills, with a page on its Web site that says “lighting is not typically a major user of energy in most homes [the average cost is $70 a year].” An energy calculator on the same page shows it costs $64.80 a month to burn 15 100-watt bulbs 12 hours a day. Comparable lighting produced by CFL bulbs would cost around $15 a month.

I went around my house the other day and counted 33 incandescent bulbs.

Forget the mall. This holiday season, I’m headed to the hardware store.

Michael Mayo’s column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at mmayo@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4508.

From Sun Sentinel - 12/21/08

President-elect Barack Obama has talked about turning the White House into the Green House and making energy efficiency in federal buildings and public schools a top priority.

“Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that,” Obama said in a Dec. 6 address. “We will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy efficient … by replacing heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs.”

Light bulbs? I had this picture in my mind of Obama and Al Gore standing on ladders, fiddling with every fixture around Washington, D.C.

I mean, how much can really be done by changing light bulbs?

Turns out a lot.

Just ask Giacomo Dresseno, longtime chef-owner of Primavera Restaurant in Oakland Park. Facing an economic downturn in a business with a slim profit margin, Dresseno decided to do something when his FPL bills climbed to nearly $3,000 a month last year.

He went green, switching hundreds of incandescent bulbs to the latest in Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs. He also got rid of some inefficient refrigerators.

The bottom line: His latest electric bill was $1,400, a 50 percent drop from its peak.

“It’s saving me $15,000 a year,” Dresseno said as he showed me the new lighting around the restaurant.

That’s a lotta pasta.

“It seems like a lot of work, but it’s not,” Dresseno said. “The technology is there, and it’s not that expensive.”

The only drawback: CFL bulbs contain a small amount of mercury, so if the bulb breaks it can be a hazard and a hassle.

Dresseno said he has spent less than a thousand dollars on the upgrades, an investment that paid for itself in less than a month. He showed me the new bulbs in the kitchen, with eight fluorescent fixtures drawing only 64 watts each, compared to 240 watts used by the old ones.

He showed off the women’s bathroom, where 45 watts’ worth of LED bulbs does the job that 480 watts of incandescent bulbs used to do.

Dresseno spoke about the ripple effects. “Feel this,” he said, as he unscrewed an LED bulb with his bare hand. It was warm to the touch, about 120 degrees, but it didn’t burn like an incandescent bulb. All those bulbs producing less heat means the air conditioning doesn’t kick on as much.

So maybe there is something to this, something simple and concrete most businesses and homes can do right now without installing expensive solar panels or building a windmill on the front lawn.

“I feel like it’s politically correct, it’s the right thing to do,” said Dresseno, originally from Lake Como, Italy. “And it puts more money in my pocket and less in FPL’s.”

Now that’s change we can believe in. Saving the planet is one thing, but getting revenge on our favorite utility by denting FPL’s bottom line should make this irresistible for South Floridians.

by: www.indobase.com

Many of like to settle down comfortably in some favorite corner of the house and spend some time reading books or magazines we love. All of us have some reading and writing to do at some point of time. These two activities put a strain on our eyes and thus what is needed is proper lighting to reduce the strain. Adequate desk lighting is a must for students for long hours of night study. Here are a few tips on how the lighting should be while studying, writing or working on a computer:

• Lighting should be bright and must be focused on to the area where you are working.
• Use task lighting as it is focused and does not create any shadows. This lighting illuminates only the work surface like the study table.
• Use halogen bulbs as experts consider them the best to illuminate reading material.
• Using fluorescent bulbs is better than using incandescent bulbs. Fluorescent bulbs last longer, save electricity and are now available in a variety of colors.
• Right-handed individuals should place the light on their left hand side and vice versa. This is to ensure that the shadow of the hand does not fall the pages.
• You should sit upright and read with the material at a distance of about 14 to 18 inches away from the eyes.
• For long night study one should choose glare-free task lighting.
• As an individual grows older his eyes become weaker. Thus older people need more light for reading and writing.

by Craig DiLouie

The Energy Policy Act (EPAct) of 2005 created the Commercial Buildings Deduction (CBD), which established an accelerated tax deduction rewarding investment in energy-efficient interior lighting, HVAC/hot water systems and building envelope.Initially set to expire December 31, 2007 and then December 31, 2008, the CBD was recently extended by Congress to expire in five years: December 31, 2013.

The Deduction
A tax deduction is a cost subtracted from adjusted gross income when calculating taxable income; tax liability is not reduced dollar for dollar, as is the case with a tax credit, but instead in proportion to the taxpayer’s tax bracket.

Deducting the cost of a capital investment such as new lighting is not special. What is special about the CBD is the owner can potentially write off the entire cost of the new lighting in the tax year in which it is placed in service, instead of capitalized and depreciated or amortized over time. So it’s an accelerated tax deduction: If a cost item associated with installing new lighting is normally depreciated and claimed over a period of years, it can now be claimed in a single tax year.

 

 

Time.com

By Michael Grunwald
Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2008

This may sound too good to be true, but the U.S. has a renewable-energy resource that is perfectly clean, remarkably cheap, surprisingly abundant and immediately available. It has astounding potential to reduce the carbon emissions that threaten our planet, the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our security and the energy costs that threaten our wallets. Unlike coal and petroleum, it doesn’t pollute; unlike solar and wind, it doesn’t depend on the weather; unlike ethanol, it doesn’t accelerate deforestation or inflate food prices; unlike nuclear plants, it doesn’t raise uncomfortable questions about meltdowns or terrorist attacks or radioactive-waste storage, and it doesn’t take a decade to build. It isn’t what-if like hydrogen, clean coal and tidal power; it’s already proven to be workable, scalable and cost-effective. And we don’t need to import it.

This miracle juice goes by the distinctly boring name of energy efficiency, and it’s often ignored in the hubbub over alternative fuels, the nuclear renaissance, T. Boone Pickens and the green-tech economy. Clearly, it needs an agent. But it’s a simple concept: wasting less energy. Or more precisely, consuming less energy to get the same amount of heat for your shower, light for your office and power for your factory. It turns out to be much less expensive, destructive and time-intensive to reduce demand through efficiency than to increase supply through new drilling or new power plants. A nationwide push to save “negawatts” instead of building more megawatts could help reverse our unsustainable increases in energy-hogging and carbon-spewing while creating a slew of jobs and saving a load of cash.

Now this may sound like Jimmy Carter’s 30-year-old plea for us to turn down the heat and put on sweaters or like an eco-lecture nagging us to turn off lights, drive less and otherwise change our behavior to save energy. It would be nice if we did, but that’s conservation, not efficiency. We don’t have to sacrifice comfort or change routines to get efficient. Doing less with less may be admirable, but efficiency is about doing the same or more with less. And studies by groups as diverse as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and even the National Petroleum Council have identified efficiency as the way to start addressing our energy and climate crises. In fact, we’ve already started; the Alliance to Save Energy calculates that without the efficiency gains we’ve made since the last energy crisis, in 1973, our economy would use nearly 50% more energy today. That’s more than we get from oil, twice what we get from coal or natural gas and six times what we get from nuclear plants.

But we could save much more. A McKinsey study found that a global effort to boost efficiency with existing technologies could have “spectacular results,” eliminating more than 20% of world energy demand by 2020. Efficiency guru Amory Lovins argues that today’s best techniques could save the U.S. half our oil and gas and three-fourths of our electricity. That would mean no more imports from the Middle East, lower utility bills for everyone and a big step off our path toward a hotter planet. Honeywell CEO Dave Cote brags that widespread adoption of just his own company’s efficiency products could slash U.S. energy use 20%. “There’s a huge amount of low-hanging fruit,” he says.

There are two basic ways to save energy without deprivation or daily effort. We can use more efficient machinery, like fuel-efficient cars that guzzle less gas, or those pigtailed compact fluorescent lightbulbs that use 75% less power than traditional bulbs, or state-of-the-art refrigerators that are three times as efficient as 1973 models. We can also use machinery more productively. That can be as simple as insulating pipes and ducts, caulking doors and windows and otherwise weatherizing our homes to avoid heating our attics and the outdoors. Or installing motion sensors and programmable thermostats that turn out lights and air conditioners when no one’s in the room. President-elect Barack Obama noted on the campaign trail that if we all just properly inflated our tires and maintained our engines, we could save as much oil now as new offshore drilling would produce by 2030. And since buildings devour two-thirds of our power, commercial and industrial operations can weed out even more waste through green construction and automated systems that practically import power as needed. “We’ve hit rock bottom in our addiction to fossil fuels,” says Ian Bowles, Massachusetts energy and environmental affairs secretary. “We need an intervention, and energy efficiency is it.”